Nupping

HOSS; 2011

Find it at:

Dope Body are one of the only underground bands in existence brave enough to claim Rage Against the Machine as a formative influence. The Baltimore-based noise-punk quartet embraces the signature sounds of the alternative nation, but uses pedals, loops, and off-kilter rhythms to pummel its teenage heroes into blurry abstraction. Borrowing from punk-funk and nu-metal as much as spazz-core and pigfuck, the group plays Dr. Moreau with a decade's worth of MTV buzz clips. It's telling that Dope Body's debut album, Nupping, has a song called "The Shape of Grunge to Come."

Bro-rock and Boredoms mash up better than you might think. Live, Dope Body are a mosh-worthy mess of sweat and blast beats. Frontman Andrew Laumann alternates between punker grunts and animalistic yelps, his shirt rarely staying on his chest for an entire performance, while guitarist Zach Utz makes hairpin turns between stoner chugging and modem noise. Nupping does an admirable job of capturing the band's spastic onstage energy.

Album opener "Enemy Outta Me" wiggles to life with the band playing around an off-time loop, but it quickly makes a left turn into scorching riff-rock. Utz pulls double duty, answering each of his chugging stoner riffs with a bevy of electronic gurgles. When it's time for the big guitar solo, he instead opts for some balloon-on-hair squelches. "Bangers & Yos" pogos around on a rubber-band riff that's just far enough removed from "Bulls on Parade" that Rage's lawyers won't have grounds to sue.

Like Philly sludge-punkers Pissed Jeans, Dope Body have a special gift for draining the air from muscle-head music. Pissed Jeans do this mainly through lyrics, imbuing early 80s hardcore with a narrative of manly anguish. Dope Body pull at the sounds of dude-rock like taffy-- tugging guitars out of key, building up big walls of heavy rhythm only to belch in the face of fist-pumping catharsis. Utz's expansive pedal board and glitchy deconstruction of Tom Morello riffs may hint at arty pretensions, but Dope Body still smell punk.